The first contacts with Tibet and the Islamic world began around the mid-eighth century when it grew out of a combination of trade via the Silk Road and the military presence of Muslim forces in the Fergana Valley. Despite the vague knowledge the Islamic world had about Tibet, there were a few early Islamic works that mention Tibet. One such source is from a work authored by Abu Sa'id Gardezi titled Zayn al-Akhbar. In it, the work mentions the environment, fantastical origin of the Tibetans, the divinity of the king, major resources and a description of the trade routes to and from Tibet. Another source, Hudud al-'Alam written by an unknown author in 982 or 983 in Afghanistan, contains mainly geography, politics and brief descriptions of Tibetan regions, cities, towns and other localities. This source has the first direct mention of the presence of Muslims in Tibet by stating that Lhasa had one mosque and a small Muslim population. During the reign of Sadnalegs, there was a protracted war against Arab powers to the West. It appears that Tibetans captured a number of Arab troops and pressed them into service on the eastern frontier in 801. Tibetans were active as far west as Samarkand and Kabul. Arab forces began to gain the upper hand, and the Tibetan governor of Kabul submitted to the Arabs and became a Muslim about 812 or 815 Extensive trade with Kashmir, Ladakh, and Baltistan also brought Muslims to Tibet especially after the adoption or growing presence of Islam in these regions starting from the fourteenth century. The ongoing growth of Muslims continued as an affect of the Tibetan-Ladakhi treaty of 1684 in which the Tibetan government allowed trade missions from Ladakh to enter Lhasa every three years. Many Kashmiri and Ladakhi Muslims joined these missions with some settling in Tibet. During the reign of the Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, a permanent Muslim community settled down in Tibet. They were permitted to elect their own council of representatives, settle their group's legal disputes with Islamic law, and some land was donated to them for the construction of a mosque close to Lhasa. An influx of Kashmiri Muslims in Nepal fled to Tibet starting from 1769 as a consequence of the invasion of the Kathmandu Valley by Prithvi Narayan Shah. As early as the seventeenth century, Ningxia and other northwestern Hui began to settle in the eastern regions of Tibet. They intermarried with the local Tibetans and continued to have to extensive trade contacts with other Muslims inside China. Another recent wave of new Muslim settlers began after the Dogra conquest of Tibet in 1841. Many Kashmiri and Ladakhi Muslim troops stayed behind to settle in Tibet. A few Hindu Dogras also settled in Tibet and subsequently converted to Islam. After the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1950, the Tibetan Muslims faced brutal persecution just like their Buddhist brethren. Since then, Chinese Muslims have settled in Tibet. The Chinese government classified the Tibetan Muslims as Hui. However, the Tibetan Muslims are often called Zang Hui as they speak Tibetan and have a material culture almost identical to their Buddhist counterparts. The Tibetan Hui in Lhasa consider themselves to be very different from the Chinese Muslims and sometimes marry with other Tibetans instead of their fellow Muslims from China.
Converts in Qinghai
Islam was spread by the Salar people to the formerly Buddhist Kargan Tibetans in Lamo-shan-ken. Some Tibetans in Qinghai who converted to Islam are now considered Hui people.
